


The Flu

by MyEvilTwin (ProtoNeoRomantic)



Series: Blood Screaming [5]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Captivity, Child Death, Childhood Memories, Childhood Trauma, Consent Issues, Courtroom Drama, Dysfunctional Family, Episode: s02e18 Killed by Death, F/M, Falling In Love, Family Secrets, Father Figures, Father-Daughter Relationship, Flu Epidemic, Foil Figures, Forbidden Love, Gen, Gender Issues, Illness, Interns & Internships, Jail, Juvenile Detention, Lies, Loss of Virginity, Memory Loss, Monsters, Morning Sickness, Murder, Office Blow Jobs, Office Sex, Older Man/Younger Woman, Power Imbalance, Romance, Seduction, Survivor Guilt, Teen Pregnancy, The flu, Unplanned Pregnancy, Vampire Sex, Vampire Slaying, Vampires, Watchers, Werewolves, Where the Bodies are Buried, epidemic, hospital drama, incarceration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-11
Updated: 2014-03-11
Packaged: 2018-01-15 08:15:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1297828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProtoNeoRomantic/pseuds/MyEvilTwin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As the Flu epidemic tightens it's deadly grip on Sunnydale and Joyce Summers remains missing, Buffy and Hank must face their separate and combined weird and tricky problems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Dad

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Lady's Choice](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1223416) by [ProtoNeoRomantic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProtoNeoRomantic/pseuds/ProtoNeoRomantic). 
  * Inspired by [Who Do You Think You Are?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1235281) by [ProtoNeoRomantic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProtoNeoRomantic/pseuds/ProtoNeoRomantic). 



> Set more or less in the time period between Chapter 6: "Accidents and Miracles" and chapter 7: "Lines and Shadows" of Lady's Choice, and maybe a little to the left. Exactly contemporaneous with BtVS s02 e18 "Killed by Death".
> 
> For more information on Canon Compliance/Divergence and Story Mechanics and Themes, see series description.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Giles is resting peacefully after his accident, but his 'caring nurse' isn't who she pretends to be, in fact she seems to share some deep dark secret with his father, one of many. Hanks Summers is having a pretty good day being a very bad boy when he is suddenly interrupted by a family crisis that forces him to rush to Sunnydale.

Finally, at four in the morning, Roberta went home. Rupert was more or less out of the woods and sleeping peacefully. She had to get a little sleep herself before going on shift again at eleven. But first she made a phone call. “Ms. Winston,” she said crisply, “give me Mr. Giles please.” There were no questions asked. A moment later, Andrew was on the line. Succinctly, without pretense of sentiment, she let him know of his son’s condition and of the Slayer’s most recent arrest.

“No, I don’t believe there’s the slightest chance he’ll have to be removed from his post,” she answered calmly, addressing his question as he should have meant it, “not even temporarily. Certainly not for any medical reason. I expect he’ll be discharged—from hospital—within a week or so.”…

“No, I’m not certain of anything. Her demeanor and comportment are suggestive as are the circumstances we’ve discussed, but then all of it may be no more than the disorderly behavior of an ill-controlled Vampire Slayer.”…

Roberta pursed her lips. “Yes,” she said dutifully, “I’m sure that’s true.”…

“No, he spoke of nothing sensitive, at least not coherently enough to be understood.”…

Again she pursed her lips, but let him hear none of her disapproval. “He _sang a_ little bit about that actually, but to understand what he meant by it, one would have to have known already.”…

“Yes, he is indeed, but then, aren't we all?”…

“Mr. Giles, you know you may rely on my complete discretion. As always.”

****

The phone rang yet again. Yet again, they let it go to voice mail. “You’re not the only one who can’t get enough of me,” Hank joked breathlessly between groans.

“Muhumm,” Mitzie agreed cheerfully. He wanted to say something inappropriately cool, casual and above it, like ‘don’t talk with your mouth full.’ But Hank was not cool. He was on fire, consumed by the ecstasy of having a beautiful nineteen-year-old girl sucking his cock. She was on her knees, under his desk with her hands on his thighs and her head bobbing in his lap like a happy little sparrow. He leaned back in his black leather chair, hands behind his head, enjoying himself. She was working so hard to please him, running her tongue all up and down and around the shaft and head of his dick in irregularly repeating patterns that left his every nerve ending clambering with anticipation, all the while sucking and slurping, not willing to let more than an inch of him leave her mouth.

Hank smiled at the memory of her marketing professor’s letter of recommendation assuring him that, if he chose her for this internship he would be, “very satisfied with Ms. Lovelle’s energy, creativity and industriousness.” All of that had turned out to be true in every possible way. In the six months she’d been with the company, she had had more bright ideas that really worked for advertising the sale of advertising than some people he knew who’d been getting paid good money for a dozen years. But Hank couldn’t help thinking that this might be what the guy had really been thinking about when he’d written that letter. She’d sure as hell had some experience sucking cock before she’d ever gotten his dong in her mouth, and she was damn sure industrious about it.

“Stop. Don’t make me come this time,” he commanded with sudden passion. “I can’t stand it anymore. I have to fuck you!”

Mitzie raised her head and met his eyes, looking an odd mixture of hopeful and apprehensive. “Do you really think we should?” she asked. “Here? Now?”

Hank leaned down and kissed her candy heart mouth. He pulled her into his lap and cupped her breasts in his hands. “No, we shouldn’t” he purred against her skin as he moved both his mouth and his hands downward. “But I’m going to.” He reached up her skirt and pulled her lacy, made-to-be-taken-off panties down over her thighs so that her bare wet cunt was inches from his fat, hard, saliva damp dick. “I’m going to fuck you!” he declared grinning, rubbing his cock head against her pussy lips and her clit. “Tell me you want me to fuck you!”

“Yeah,” Mitzie agreed, eager and nervous at the same time. “You know I really, really, really like you a lot!” She knew better than to use that other “L” word.

“No,” Hank corrected her, sliding a couple of fingers just a little ways inside her pussy, putting her hand on his dick with the other hand. “If you want this cock in that sweet slot, tell me you want me to _fuck_ you!”

Mitzie nodded. “I want you to fuck me,” she whispered, actually blushing when she said the word, which was just almost too cute under the circumstances. “I want _you_ , Hank. God, I want you!”

“Beg me,” he said, fingering her in a way that he knew no girl could withstand without becoming desperate with desire. “Beg me to put it in. Beg me to come inside you.”

“Beg?” Mitzie repeated doubtfully, confused, on the verge of being offended. She shifted uncomfortably, but he used the motion against her. She whimpered as he relentlessly built the pre-orgasmic tension in her already sitting up and begging clitoris.

“Beg,” he repeated with brutal, defiant passion, then he grabbed her by the back of her head, hands tangled in her hair, and kissed her lips. “Straddle my cock,” he instructed her when their tongues were in their own heads again. He held on to her hips, held her out so that his dick was only in glancing contact with her bush. “Now, beg me to fuck you,” he insisted, grinning. His tone was a little more playful than before, but he still wasn't relenting.

Mitzie’s heart was pounding. Her cheeks were burning, more than the rest of her even. She was not at all sure that she liked this game. Not at all. But she was way more than sure that she ‘liked’ Hank Summers. He was not like any guy who had ever paid her any attention before, not a clueless teenager or a blustering barely-up-being-a-college boy trying to pass off arrogance as confidence and horniness as affection. He was strong and smart and cool and smooth and successful and in charge of his life, which was a reality and not a someday. He was not clinging to her out of need, but wooing _her_ out of the dozens of women who would be happy to have him, by choice, out of desire, because he wanted her more than any of them. He was a Man and she wanted him to be her Man. She wanted to be his Woman, and okay, let’s be honest, at that exact moment she really, really, really wanted to get fucked.

“Fuck me,” she pleaded, “Oh God! Hank, please, please, please, please fuck me! Put your beautiful cock inside me, please!”

She felt his grip on her hips shift and tighten as he pulled her a little closer. She felt the broad head of his dick parting her lips, sliding inside her. Her breath caught, her heart skipped. This was it! They were really, truly doing it. Having actual sex and not some schoolboy’s approximation. But they weren't. He had stopped, still with just the head inside her, throbbing maddeningly. Or maybe it was her pussy that was throbbing.

Hank was still smiling, still strangely in control, though he was breathing a little hard. “Do you really want me to _fuck_ you?” he panted.

“Yes!” Mitzie insisted, frustrated, on the edge of being distressed, “please, please just do it!” But as he pulled her down onto his penis, jerking her tight by the hips, putting her on like a piece of clothing, she felt a nauseous mixture of panic and regret. Paradoxically, she found herself putting her arms around him, clinging to him, needing to be reassured that he _was_ her Man.

His strokes were deep and hard, fast, not gentle, slightly painful in fact as was his grip on her ass. She didn't attribute the pain to her technical virginity; there was no reason why a man’s penis should be any more uncomfortable to have inside her cunt that anything else of comparable size. He was just plain doing it too hard, but she didn't complain. She gasped and panted leaving the nature of her intense emotion and sensation unspecified. There was no reason to be disappointed or to make him feel bad about it Mitzie reasoned with herself. It was stupid to expect that everything would be great and perfect the first time. It was something you had to learn, to work on with every new person, at least according to what her mother told her. They would get better at it.

Suddenly, still inside her, Hank rose from the chair and threw her on top of the desk. He collapsed on top of her, fucking her harder than ever. “Owe!” Mitzie exclaimed before she could stop herself. In books and movies throwing people around during sex was passionate and romantic, but in real life it just hurt. Hank stopped her mouth with a kiss, another real life disappointment. It made her feel ignored and disrespected. Mitzie tried to tell herself she was being silly, childish, in a bad way womany, reading some kind of symbolic subtext about their relationship status or power dynamics or whatever into what was really just a man enjoying sex, doing exactly what she had told him to do. But ten minutes in she was just holding on in discomfort and confusion waiting for him to finish, kind of dreading him coming inside her, wondering if he’d be mad if she told him not to.

Then, suddenly, she realized that there was a pretty good reason he might be mad if she didn't tell him not to. “Hank?” She began hesitantly. He was grunting and moaning. She felt like she was interrupting someone else’s conversation.

“Shut up and fuck me, baby,” he gasped.

“No, listen,” she tried again at little more firmly, “Hank, I’m not—” He kissed her again, so hard she wasn't sure her lip wasn't bleeding. He forced his tongue into her mouth so far that she felt about as close to gagging as she ever had sucking his dick. And then he came inside her. When she felt it happening, she kind of tried to push him off, but he was heavy, and not paying her any attention, and she wasn't even sure what she wanted anymore except for everything to be different than she suddenly knew it was. And anyway, it was already too late.

“Damn, girl,” he declared breathlessly. _That_ was a good fuck!”

“I’m glad you think so,” Mitzie said.

She was pissed, and based on her last minute whining when he was getting ready to come, Hank was extremely confident he knew why. He laughed a little, still finding her inexperience sort of cute. “Relax,” he said soothingly, “I’m still gonna make you come.” He tried to put his hands on her cunt. She sat up, legs camping together indignantly and slapped him in the face. While he was still stunned by this inexplicable (though in his experience not totally unprecedented) female response to sex, she pulled her skirt down and tried to push past him to get off the desk. “Come on, calm down,” he chastised her, “Whatever you think I did or said, you’re taking it wrong.”

She opened her mouth, presumably to make some kind of bitchy nineteen-year-old remark about his performance or selfishness or whatever when Janet buzzed through on the intercom. “Hank?” she said worriedly, “are you back yet?”

Hank’s focus instantly shifted at the sound of his ex-girlfriend and still secretary. “Never left,” he said calmly, completely businesslike. Mitzie dropped her eyes feeling ashamed without completely understanding why.

Mitzie tried to stand up again, but he gently pushed her back down, putting a finger to his lips. She complied, crossing her arms and leg, looking extremely put out, which was in a wrong way kind of sexy, especially with her dental floss panties dangling absurdly from one ankle. “Have you heard these messages?” Janet was asking. What was she so Goddamned worried about now?

“No,” he said. “I was _working_. At _my_ job.” Now Mitzie was giving him a dirty look, and not the good kind. “What messages?”

“It’s the police,” she explained dramatically. Mitzie looked dismayed now. And worried. They were having an all-girls worry-a-thon. He might as well be a polygamist. “From that town, where your daughter lives,” Janet went on in her hand-wringing voice.

“What about them?” Hank demanded impatiently. Great! Now _Joyce_ could get in on the worrying action. She could headline at Worry-Fest ’98, held center stage in the middle of Hank’s business.

“It’s that Detective Sollers again,” Janet warbled. “He’s called like three times in the last hour. He said you never returned his call from last night.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Hank countered impatiently. Damn it, he was a busy man. He did not have time to jump every time the phone rang with more of Buffy’s juvenile delinquent crap. “For bonus points,” he added with a slight sneer, “make it something Joyce can’t handle just as well without me.”

“Hank, Joyce is missing!” Janet countered, at once horrified and exasperated, “They think she may be dead!”

“Holy crap!” Mitzie gasped, then clamped her hands over her mouth in an unsettlingly Buffy-like way.

“Oh, hello,” said Janet, nasty-sweet. “I didn’t realize you worked through lunch too. How very… industrious.” Hank gestured for Mitzie to get off his desk, casually snapping those elastic panties against her ankle to remind her to pull them up.  He ignored both Janet’s bitchy jealousy and Mitzie’s stammering response, demanding information about the real emergency.

Mitzie slunk towards the door. She stopped and leaned against a wall, still trying unsuccessfully to get those hatefully tangly little underpants back on over her high heel shoes. She gave up and stuffed them in her cleavage, put her head down and left. She didn't think Hank noticed. He had long since turned back to questioning Janet, suddenly laser focused on the important people in his _real_ life who actually mattered to him. “Where’s Buffy?” he demanded. “Is she alright?”

“She’s in jail!” Janet declared tragically. Despite the awkwardness of the relationships involved and her intense desire to be not in this situation anymore, Mitzie couldn't help stopping in the outer office to listen. It was just so awful; Hank must be so upset. It was also puzzling. From the pictures in his office and what little he’d said about her, Mitzie had gotten the impression that Hank’s daughter was about twelve years old. If so, she must be an even rottener kid than Janet had said.

“Oh, God, No!” Hank was saying. “She didn't—I mean they don’t think she…”

“No, no!” Janet assured him hurriedly. “She just decked Detective Sollers.” Mitzie sort of cringed at that detail. The fact that he needed assuring about what he was obviously being assured about was disturbing enough.

“Oh,” said Hank, audibly relieved, not shocked or disturbed in the least, then, just a bit sardonically, “That’s my little girl!”

“I think he said something to her about one of her boyfriends,” Janet said in an agreeing tone, “who’s evidently gotten her mixed up in a couple of for sure murder investigations already.”

“Oh my God!” Mitzie gasped.

Janet looked daggers at her. “Don’t you have _work_ somewhere you could be doing, Ms. Lovelle?” she demanded. Mitzie nodded and headed for the lady’s room, acutely aware of the wadded up panties in her bra and of Hank’s semen running down the inside of her leg.

****

Bath, England, 1956

“Are you sure that’s deep enough?” Helena asked skeptically, looking at the hole in the ground like it was a speck of dust on a white glove.

Andrew glared at her a moment. “That depends on how many women I have to bury,” he grumbled sardonically. Helena gave him a look of disapproval as though he’d been eating with his elbows on the table, obviously not feeling the least bit threatened, although he had eight inches and about fifty pounds on her counting muscle rather than fat, and he was holding a heavy shovel. They both knew damn well who was not the master of this house and who was its mistress.

“Perhaps I had better go and check on Rupert,” she said after a moment, appalled rather than cowed by his glowering hatred.

Andrew sniffed contemptuously, shaking his head. “Of course,” he said bitterly, petulantly, “ _He_ might be upset!”

****

“What murders?” Hank demanded. “Why am I just now hearing about this?”

“Well, I’d _say_ ask Joyce…” Janet told him, still watching the slut of the month slink off down the hall to get herself together.

Hank sighed. “What time is it?” he asked.

“1:06 Janet informed him. “If you leave now you can probably get down there by 3:30 and get done whatever there is to do before people start going home for the day.”

“No,” Hank argued, “I can’t cancel on Newmark. We’ve been trying to get something together for too long. Call Leslie and ask her if he can move it up from three to two if I come to him, then buzz the guys and tell them the staff meeting’s at 1:15 instead of 4:30. Call Leon at Pangrac and Clarkson; tell him to call down there and find out about her charges and court dates and bail and whatever. If he has to send someone down there, he can put it on my tab. I’ll call him after Newmark and see what I need to do to go pick her up.”

Janet shook her head. Hank couldn’t see her, but he knew she did. He could picture the disapproving look on her face too, but there was nothing to stop him from pretending he didn’t know about it. She was his Goddamned secretary, not his wife and not his mother. Or Buffy’s. He didn’t owe her an explanation of his priorities or his strategies for dealing with them, at home or at work no matter how many time she slept in his bed or cooked him waffles or told her mother she was ‘seeing someone special’. There was not a hell of a lot he could do for Buffy right now other than calling Leon and Joyce was not going to be any more or less dead or alive at 5:00 than she would be at 3:30. Hank could deal with whatever there was to deal with in Sunnydale _after_ he sealed the deal with Newmark and Janet could disapprove all she wanted to.

But before he could seal the deal with Newmark, he still had to do the work he was supposed to have done with Mitzie over lunch. Getting fucked and sucked might have been interesting and rewarding in itself, but it certainly hadn’t prepared him to present the presentation Mitzie had spent half of last night working up while he’d been home in bed with Janet. He guessed he could call her back into his office and do it right now, but that would mean catching more hell than he really wanted to, and besides, he had a staff meeting in seven minutes. He’d have to take her with him. He _couldn’t_ take her with him. Janet was already onto the scent of their affair like a bloodhound.

Well hell, what was he doing in the ad game if he didn’t know how to make hay out of a disadvantage? “You’re right,” he said with a resigned sigh, even though Janet had not actually _said_ anything. Cancel the staff meeting. Mitzie can handle the pitch to Newmark. We ran through the whole thing over lunch, she probably knows the material about as well as I do. I need to be with my daughter.”

But he had been right about how little there was he could actually do. Righter than he knew. “Don’t” Janet had told him flatly, when he’d called around five o’clock to tell her he was heading back to L.A., without Buffy. But it wasn’t like they would have actually let him stay with her for more than a few minutes a day. Janet didn’t see it that way. For the first time in recent memory, she hadn’t even offered to come over when he got home. It didn’t matter. She was sad-mad. Seeing her would only have depressed him and he felt low enough already.

Impulsively, in a bid to cheer himself up, Hank stopped at a florist and bought a dozen white roses. He drove to an address he’d memorized like everything he read. In a so-so neighborhood northwest of down town, he climbed the cheaply rusticafied wooden railed concrete stairs to the second floor exterior walkway of an unremarkable apartment building, one of dozens that made up one of a million such complexes. Holding the roses before his heart, putting on a nervous smile, he rang the doorbell. Mitzie blinked when she saw him, confusion momentarily flickering into delight before she remembered to glare at him skeptically. “What do you want?” she asked trying much too hard to sound like she wanted him to go away.

Hanks sort of hunched his shoulders and looked at her at an angle that almost managed to be up instead of down despite his height advantage. He let his grin falter a little. “I came to apologize,” he said sheepishly.

 


	2. Tilt-A-World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A gropy guard isn't the only thing making Buffy sick, but upon reflection, she is forced to admit that it is probably not the flu.

Buffy stared at the amazing, sophisticated, computer controlled, automatically locking solid steal door of her cell, knowing damn well she could get through it eventually if she really wanted to. She really wanted to. She didn’t. At least, not yet. And not just because there were a dozen men and women on the other side with guns and Tasers who  _might_ , if she wasn’t careful, actually be able to hurt her. Not even just because of that and the fact that she might have to hurt them to get away. Buffy stayed in her cell because there were still a few lines she hadn’t crossed yet. Because if she jumped through just the right hoops for a while longer, eventually she might be free to walk around and do things like a regular person again without the law on her back every minute.

But this was Thursday night and she’d been locked up more than not since Saturday and court still wasn’t for another fourteen hours. And her mom was gone. She was out there, somewhere, dead or alive or the worst kind of neither and if Buffy had had half a clue where to start looking, she’d be out there too, damn the consequences. But she didn’t. Oz had been out sniffing into the wee hours of Wednesday morning and had sent word by Hal Gaston that all he’d found was a couple of maybe abandoned nests of the ones that had fried at the cemetery. No sign of Joyce Summers.

At least Hal had been able to tell her that Giles was alive and awake and, despite having a cracked skull, double pneumonia and a couple of other things that sounded about as bad, he was likely to make a full recovery. When he’d asked if she had any message to send back, she’d simply told him to say that she’d be fine and to concentrate on getting better. Anything else was too complicated, too personal, too dangerous. Then Dad’s lawyer had materialized with the news that the Great Man had at last looked down from Olympus and noticed her distress and Hal had bowed out of the picture.

The Man himself had even condescended to spend a whole five minutes with her yesterday—the first she’d seen of him since the Ice Show nearly six weeks ago—after which he had apparently stayed in town just long enough to learn that she couldn’t get bailed out on her brand spanking new adult felony charge for battering a police officer until the juvenile court sat on Friday and figured out what to do about her spectacular and immediate violation of the terms of her pretrial release in light of the fact that her custodial parent was more or less literally missing in action. She hadn’t said much to him. There wasn’t much she could say. He’d made a few halfhearted demands for her to explain the mess that was her life but had seemed relieved when she hadn’t. He’d turned right around and gone back to L.A. to squeeze in another day’s brilliant work selling ice to Alaskan Natives before the inconvenience of having to take the whole morning off on Friday to deal with her and her messy problems.

So here she sat in the Del Bacco County Jail, up front in the suicide prevention cell, not because anybody was worried she might have feelings or anything what with all the murder and death and missingness of persons, but because she was the only female prisoner under eighteen and they didn’t want to waste a whole drunk tank on her or try to split up a pod. Plus, she thought, some of the guys just liked having 24 hour camera access to the notorious Jailbait Mall Flasher. Here she sat and sat and sat with plenty of time to think, plenty of time to wonder: If she would ever see her mom again, if she would have to put a stake in her, if her dad actually and truly gave a crap, if Willow was going to survive all of this, how Xander was and what he could tell her, if Giles had messages just as personal, just as dangerous, that he didn’t dare to send to her, or if she was only imagining that they had any relationship status beyond regretful ex-participants in a brief, ill-advised office romance.

Well, that and potential parents. She was going on six days post coitus with Giles and based on her period, probably four to six days post ovulation. There was now absolutely no chance that she _might_ get pregnant. She either was or she wasn’t. One more thing to try not to think about. But there wasn’t a hell of a lot to do in here besides think.

“Smile Summers,” Deputy Carlson said, smug, leering, unpleasantly cheerful, “We just picked up a couple more thuggettes knocked over a liquor store and killed the clerk, so you three get to switch places with the two babyrapers in PC. You can braid each other’s hair and swap arson stories, it’ll be like a slumber party.” His grin was a wide open window to his totally inappropriate thoughts, not that he seemed to mind exposing them. “I just wish there was a camera in there that worked,” he said.

“I’ll bet,” said Buffy dryly. “Don’t worry, somehow I don’t think you’re going to be missing anything that interesting.”

“Not much chance of a pillow fight breaking out then?” he asked, simultaneously flirting and sneering and poking fun at himself in a way that was just a little too hostile to be the least bit charming.

“I’d be shocked,” Buffy said. But as she followed her jocular jailer down the long, oppressive corridor to the old part of the jail where the guys in protective custody had recently been, Buffy felt an all too familiar prickling of no part of her body she could exactly pinpoint, telling her that violence of a much more serious kind was actually quite likely. Vampires. But why would vampires be stupid enough to let themselves get locked up knowing they would just have to break back out again before the sun came flooding in through the tiny windows in the morning? Unless they had come for her.

Buffy cast an eye around her immediate environment, looking for a weapon. Being chained hand and foot didn’t help a hell of a lot. She could probably break the chains if she really had to, but not quickly and not with an armed guard interfering. She could probably knock him in the head with her cuffs and take his gun, which would at least give her a way to hold them off till she thought of something better. Like stealing his baton. Was it wood or just metal? It wasn’t like she could really ask.

Of course, there was also the slight problem of there being a camera on this particular hallway to capture the moment and send more guards running, though maybe then they’d at least put her back in a cell by herself, but it would make the whole take your lumps or become a fugitive issue that much more of a problem. Plus there was the fact that, whatever you see on TV, it’s not actually all that easy to hit someone just exactly enough to knock them out. Buffy could do it pretty confidently with a free hand and a familiar target. She’d done it to Giles once in dire necessity. But to haul off and hit a total stranger a Slayer-force blow with an unfamiliar weapon at a restricted angle? He could easily land anywhere on the spectrum from armed and pissed to suddenly very dead. Still, as the door loomed closer and closer Buffy began to think that she might have hit on the best of a bad lot of options.

This was part of the old jail, one of the parts that had been remodeled in a haphazard, low budget way. The walls of the PC cell were now solid, but the door was still made of the old steel bars. Which meant that the vamps could actually get out very easily if they were just left alone for a few minutes, and get themselves heavy, blunt skull-bashing weapons in the process. Fifteen feet away now, Buffy didn’t see any sign that they were doing that. They were standing back from the door, talking, a short blonde facing out and an only slightly taller brunette facing in. As she strained to listen, she could hear one vampire explaining to the other, “I _told_ you, cause it’ll be easier than fighting those eight fucking cops with Tasers, plus we’ll actually get a decent meal tonight.”

“Oh yeah,” said an unsettlingly familiar voice, “Here they come now.” Sheila Zucker, late of Sunnydale High, once, in Snyder’s mind at least, Buffy’s chief rival for the coveted title of Most Delinquent Juvenile. A little present that Spike had made for her a few months back. From the sound of things, it was probably just a coincidence that she was here lying in wait to murder Buffy, out on her own with another girly demon. Which made sense. It wasn’t like there was a fund to support the spawn of disabled vampires.

Buffy was getting desperate. Two vamps, unarmed in a tight space, with chains and a hostile stranger in her way, might easily turn out to be one too many. The door was three feet away. Maybe while the guard was unlocking it she could get her hands on his baton without him or whoever was monitoring this and probably a dozen other monitors noticing. At the door, Carlson turned and started fumbling among his keys for the right one. The vampires were quiet and still, waiting. Impulsively, Buffy went for it. At the exact moment that Carlson found the key. And shifted and turned slightly. Just at the second that Buffy’s hand closed on exactly the place his baton had just recently been. She’d gotten a hold of something long and round alright, but it wasn't a baton.

The look of shock and delight in his eyes made Buffy slightly queasy. “Sorry,” she apologized, taking her hand off his semi-erect penis, “I have poor impulse control. It’s documented in my records.” Buffy could feel that her winning smile was forced and unconvincing, but Carlson was fooled anyway, not suspecting, as he had no wish to suspect, that she was just grasping for a piece of wood.

“There’s a spot around the corner without any cameras,” he informed her eagerly. He rubbed his actual baton against her ass in a suggestive way, hidden between their two bodies. “We don’t have to control our impulses. Let’s fuck.”

“Gee,” Buffy said, trying hard not to sound sarcastic and disgusted, “That sounds tempting, but my life is already kind of complicated right now, and I have this _really_ jealous ex-boyfriend who _sorta_ likes to kill people…”

“Come on,” he commanded impatiently, jerking her along by the belt that was looped around her yellow coveralls expressly for use as a handle. “Who’s gonna tell ‘im?”

“I’m really afraid you might get hurt,” Buffy tried to warn him again.

“ _You_ might get hurt, bitch!” he countered, losing patience with her. “You’re not a little girl. You know better than to grab a man like that and think you can just say, ‘oh well, never mind,’ and if you don’t, you’re about to learn the hard way!”

“Well… When you put it like that…” Buffy followed him around the corner, cold-cocked him with her shackles, unchained herself with his keys and inspected the baton. It was wood. Something heavy and solid, Ash or Oak, with a metal knob on one end that unscrewed to reveal a very sharp point. “Of course,” Buffy mumbled, “Welcome to Sunnydale.”

****

Hank lay awake in bed, holding Janet in his arms, not so much because he wanted to as because she was already there, sleeping soundly and he didn’t want to hassle with moving. Mitzie had accepted his apology the night before, but he hadn’t fucked her again. He had bought her sushi and white wine, both of which she seemed to find amazingly exotic and delicious, and spent the evening listening to her bubble over in her exuberant teenage way about how well everything had gone with Newmark. An hour in, he’d been shocked to find that he was actually having a pretty good time. She was so sparkling and optimistic and giving and cheerful. And she really did have enormous professional potential which she was flatteringly eager for him to help her develop. And she really had saved his ass with Newmark.

He almost certainly would have ended up in her bed if he’d put just a modest amount of effort into having it work out that way, but he hadn’t. Because over ginger ice cream she had asked him, with innocent, goodhearted concern, how he _really_ was and how things had gone with Buffy. He had told her some, not everything. Certainly enough to make her feel sorry for him. He could have used that to his advantage, but he found he didn’t want to. He’d gone to Mitzie thinking that getting her to spread her legs again after the way he’d pissed her off earlier would be a fun and distracting challenge. Instead, he found himself wishing he’d meant his apology, meaning it retroactively in fact. She was a nice girl. She liked him. She _cared_ about him. She made him wish he was a nicer guy. Also, when she told him her critical opinion of the restaurant’s décor with it’s too many cheap Japanese water color prints and how much better it would have looked with one or two more carefully chosen pieces, she made him want to cry.

He’d spent that night alone in his own bed, thinking of Joyce. He thought of her as he had first known her, as he was thinking of her again now. She was eighteen, beautiful, full of life, bubbling over with innocent passion and blushing bold desire. And nineteen, vulnerable, terrified, holding her heart out in both hands to give him the best bad news and the worst good news in the world, ready to live or die by how he took what she had to say, what she had to give. And he had loved her and pitied her and against everything he had ever said he would do in that situation he had told her not to worry, that everything would be alright, that he would _make_ everything alright for her and for her baby. And he had. For a while.

For a while life had been good and they had all been happy, and then after a while they hadn’t. Because he was still the same old Hank Summers and she was still the same old Joyce, only bossier, mommier, more grownup. And Buffy was someone else altogether.

****

The woman awoke, alone in the room but not in the house. She was chained to the bed, never a good sign, but the chain was long giving her the run of the room, including the adjoining bathroom, which she knew was there without remembering how she knew. She was naked, physically clean, her wet hair wrapped in a towel from a shower she must have taken earlier. There was a bathrobe lying at the foot of the bed. She put it on, but felt only a little less exposed.

This wasn’t her house, she knew that much, would have known it even without the heavy iron chain tethering her to the solid wooden post of that heavy, ridiculous canopy bed. If this had been her house, the room would not have been so ghastly “homey.” She might not remember exactly who she was, but she knew herself better than that. There were flowers on the wallpaper, the carpeting, the furniture, the drapes, the bedclothes, the damned bathrobe, in multiple, clashing patterns. There were knickknacks and dolls and teddy bears. The furniture was dark, heavy, hardwood, its flowers stylized, golden and flaking. They contrasted with the other foliage of the room in a way that struggled frantically to be casually eclectic but managed only a sort of forced chaos instead. It was the sort of room that might be trying to hide the fact that it was actually locked inside the gleaming white corridors of a mental institution or secured in the hold of an alien spaceship.

The bathroom door was the only door in the room, nor were there any suspicious mirrors or bookcases. Whatever you had to do to get in or out was a well hidden mystery. She pulled back the drapes, not really expecting to see a way out, but needing to look. They covered patches of wall that were not windows. There was something vaguely familiar about that fact that made Joyce feel even more uneasy than she knew she should have been.

Joyce! She tried the name on silently. It fit. She tugged at it to see what else it might be attached to and was rewarded with a little scrap of knowledge, like a luggage tag: Joyce Emiline Nuland, 419 Clementine Circle, Jefferson City Iowa, Lakewood 42761.

But that was long ago. The time between was densely packed with big, heavy, locked boxes stuffed full of forgotten events that Joyce have lived every moment of. Events that had made her other than a girl. That and the feeling of being watched, combined with the incongruity of her surroundings, made her think of Billy Pilgrim, unstuck in time, in his zoo-apartment on Tralformadore. It annoyed her that she could remember the plot of a Kurt Vonnegut novel, but not of her own life. Thinking of the solid, grating reality of Billy’s wrangling with his daughter and the soft, blameless escapism of his idyllic and temporally unplacable second marriage, Joyce wondered if she actually was in a mental institution, if she were hiding inside her own mind, running away, from the people and places, she deeply, instinctively knew that she needed to get back to.

****

Buffy knelt and checked Carlson’s pulse and respiration (both were fine) while she tried to think of her next move. If she staked the two vamps, she could probably say they’d escaped and blame them for conking the guard, especially if he awoke with a short gap in his memory, which was frequently the case with a blow to the head. The trick was going to be doing it in a way that didn’t create video inconsistent with her story, especially considering she might have only seconds until Deputy Happypants woke up. It’d also be nice if she could take them one on one in a relatively open space rather than both at once in that tiny cell.

Carlson moaned and turned over. Struck by desperate inspiration, Buffy took his loop of keys from his belt and tossed them around the corner, pleased with her aim, landing them close enough to be reached through the bars. “Come eat this perv guard for me,” she offered, “and I’ll show you the quick way out of here.”

Buffy smiled as she heard the clang of keys being pulled through the bars, but Sheila was worried. “I don’t know,” she told her little blonde friend. “That’s Buffy out there. She like seriously kicks vampire butts, she’s like a freak or something!” Her tone was of awe and trepidation, it was respectful even.

“You got a better way out?” the blonde girl hissed. “It’s a good trade, come on.” The blonde rushed around the corner and onto Buffy’s stake while Sheila hung back, apprehensive.

“Oh,” Carlson moaned. “Damn, bitch, what’d you do to me?”

“Hardly anything,” Buffy assured him, helping him to his feet. “You didn’t even get it out before that crazy blonde girl broke out of the cell and attacked us. You were out for like two minutes, I was afraid they were gonna think I killed you. I hit her with this,” Buffy brandished the baton, “then… I don’t know, she like… ran away or something, and—”

“Give me that!” Carlson demanded, pulling at the wooden rod in her hand. Buffy gripped it tight, not letting him pull it out.

“I don’t know where the other one went,” she whispered, making herself sound scared as well as confused now. “There was something wrong with her _face_ ,” she pleaded, hoping that he had been trained as a good Sunnydale public servant should be, “and she like, tried to bite me or something!”

“Oh fuck!” Carlson cursed with quiet bitterness. “Alright, keep the st—baton,” he said, pulling out his Taser and revving up the setting. His manor was unnervingly protective. “Just… stay behind me,” he instructed worriedly.

“Count on it,” Buffy lied.

Carlson was feeling around his belt in a way that was starting to be frantic. “Damn it!” he cursed again, “Where’s my fucking walky-talky?”

“I don’t know,” Buffy said, trying to sound both puzzled and worried, and hopefully even a little stupid. She’d actually unclipped it while he was out and kicked it into a corner, not wanting any more of an audience than she couldn’t help but have for this. Carlson took a deep breath, steeled himself, and came around the corner. Buffy came around him at the same time.

Sheila was gone. Buffy noticed she wasn’t the only one looking up at the high, shadowy corners of the ceiling. Carlson started, choking back a scream when he made eye contact with the devil-faced brunette. Sheila leapt down at him, going for the gun at his belt, desperate for anything to defend herself against Buffy. She never got there. Wires shot from the Taser. Sheila was thrown back against the wall by the powerful electric shock, clearly enough to have killed a human. Buffy was on her in an instant, plunging the stake into her heart. “I don’t get it,” she said, handing Carlson back his ‘baton’ with an apologetic half smile and an I’m-a-ditz tilt of the head, “Where’d she go? It was just like that with the other girl, too.”

Carlson gave her skeptical look, not sure if she could be quite that dumb or not. Evidently deciding to let it go he said, “Well, it looks like you get a room to yourself after all.” After another half second’s thought he added, hopefully, “There really isn’t a camera in there, and the bunks are, you know, plenty sturdy, if you still want a quick fuck.”

Buffy gave him a stern, incredulous look and was on the verge of saying something snarky when she suddenly felt queasy again, but this time not just in a this-guy-is-so-disgusting-that-I’m-having-a-negative-emotional-reaction-that-I can-physically-feel-in-my-guts kind of way. This was full-on Why-o-merciful-God-did-you-allow-Man-to-invent-both-natchos-and-cottoncandy-and-to-sell-them-in-a-place-where-they-also-have-a-Tilt-A-Whirl? nausea. Buffy’s innards contracted, spewing a jet of vomit from her lips that drenched Carlson in pink-brown goo the consistency of lumpy oatmeal. At last, a voice came over the intercom, “Are you okay back there Ed?”

“Negative,” Carlson answered miserably, wiping puke from his face. “We have a code V resulting in escape type X of two female juveniles, repeat, two female juveniles escaped code VX. And we’ve got a third needing medical isolation.”

“Is it a code B?” the disembodied voice asked worriedly.

“Negative,” Carlson repeated. “Looks like another case of the flu.”

Buffy wanted to believe she had the flu, she really did. Back in the suicide cell, she threw up a little more. And she was tired, and dizzy and had a headache. Those were all flu symptoms weren’t they? At least potentially? You didn’t actually have to have a cough or a sneeze or respiratory symptoms of any kind to have the flu, did you? But it was undeniably weird, influenzally speaking, that she actually felt hungry. She was kind of afraid to touch the dinner tray that someone definitely not Carlson brought her. It was hard to feel much like eating considering how much the place stank. But when she experimented with a little milk and then a dinner roll, having something in her stomach felt better, not worse.

Suddenly, dizzier than ever, Buffy found herself having to lie down as an Earth-tilting memory overwhelmed her. Celia, poor dear Celia, out of her mind with fever, sweating and trashing and screaming, minutes from death. Buffy didn’t have a fever. Her bones and muscles did not ache anywhere that they hadn’t been hit very recently and very hard.

She did not have the flu.

 


	3. Someone to Watch Over Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oz checks up on Giles in the hospital. When Xander awakes from his nightmares, Cordelia is there. After a day of grappling with the juvenile justice system, Hank casts about for someone else to handle Buffy so he can get back to business in L.A.

Rupert Giles lay in bed seized with horror, misery and dread at the thought of what he had to do. It was a terrible, burdensome act, more than should be asked of a man, but there seemed to be no choice in the matter. He had to sit up. If he didn’t, it seemed, he would be in real danger of drowning. Summoning all the strength and courage of a man bread and trained to battle supernatural evils, he managed to rise inches above the seductive comfort of his already steeply inclined pillows before doubling over in a fit of coughing that shook the bed like an earthquake in an angry mood demanding to herald an apocalypse.

“Whoa there,” said Oz, putting out a hand to stop him falling too far forward. Giles nodded rather than verbalizing his thanks. A minute later Oz handed him a cup of water, waited for him to drink and then took it away again. Giles was only a little surprised to find the boy at his bedside. Buffy or Willow one had asked him to look in on him, that much was obvious, but he was pursuing the undertaking seriously. It was needed. There was a shortage of nurses.

As a nurse, Oz was calm, dutiful and professional, certainly not solicitous; which in a strange way made Giles feel very secure and comforted. It was so very much like being nursed through an illness by his grandmother. That woman was a rock, arguably in more ways than one. She had loved him with the kind of solid, dependable, certain love that doesn’t need to be—that _can’t_ be—proved by sentimental gestures. She was thirty-six years in the ground now, and though he was confident she would have quietly disapproved if he had ever let anyone hear him say so, he had missed her every single day. But then, there is perhaps no better occasion for a motherless child to miss his grandmother than when he has the flu.

Giles sighed and coughed a little more, not daring to lay back down. Melancholia, of course, was a known symptom of influenza, especially when the virus had progressed to the point of causing a potentially life threatening pneumonia, but if he was to be perfectly honest with himself, Rupert was fairly certain he had come by his another way. If Helena Giles could have looked down (or as most of her students would have argued, up) from wherever she was and seen her beloved grandson pining over (and reclining with) his own Slayer, and a mere girl of seventeen at that, she’d have done more than disapprove, and not quietly either. She’d have beaten him half to death most likely, though he was certain she would have found a way to do it with a great deal of dignity.

“Dear God! My life is such a mess!” he moaned miserably without being aware that he was going to. Oz politely ignored that maudlin outburst and went back to reading the latest issue of _Wired_ Magazine. He was most definitely the mate of Willow Rosenberg. With that though, Giles tripped and fell once again into a deep pile of guilt. “How is Willow doing?” he asked.

“Still sitting Shiva,” Oz said, his voice slightly to the hard side of blank. “I haven’t been allowed over there since Tuesday night.” Tuesday night. The night he had been so publicly involved in saving Giles from almost certain death. In the company of Buffy Summers. Damn.

There was an uncomfortable silence. “What night is it now,” Giles asked at last.

“Friday morning,” Oz explained. “The sun’ll be up any minute. Buffy has court today,” he added after a moment. “Hal thinks her dad might get to take her home today.”

“Her dad,” Giles repeated grimly.

“Joyce is still missing,” Oz confirmed. After that they didn’t talk for a while. The sun came up. Oz read his magazine. Giles dozed. When he next awoke, the sun was past its zenith. Oz was gone. He ate something his nurse, Roberta, offered him, them slept again.

****

By 1:00, when the judge was still stubbornly plowing through his extensive docket without so much as a hint that he might ever break for lunch, Buffy was a truly pitiful sight. Hank wasn’t allowed to sit next to her or interact with her in any way. She was chained, literally chained, hand and foot, to a chair that was bolted to the floor in in jury box. You’d have thought she was up for Murder I, though he supposed in juvenile court, especially out here in the sage brush, any violent felony was pretty big noise. Hank could have just about handled having to see her hobbled up like that if it wasn’t for the fact that she was also having to vomit periodically in a plastic bucket and wipe her mouth on her grimy yellow sleeve because she wasn’t considered quite worthy of a rag.

They made her sit there like that, obviously needing medical attention, while they called every underage shoplifter, pot-smoker, graffiti artist and peeping Tom in the county in ridged alphabetical order. Sixteen-year-old Arnold H. Stewart had just been placed on a year’s probation for having a pack of rolling papers and no tobacco and fifteen-year-old Seth Stuart had gotten the same thing for having tobacco, when, incredibly, with only five names to go and Buffy’s at the top of the list, the judge said, “Alright, court will be in recess until 2:15 for lunch.”

Buffy groaned miserably. Hank couldn’t take it anymore. “Excuse me, your honor,” he said as politely as he could, getting to his feet. Both Buffy and the _slightly_ older little girl that Leon had sent to act as her “lawyer” (proving how little he had learned from Hank about client relations as marketing) looked at him apprehensively.

“Sir, for what purpose do you rise?” the judge demanded haughtily, like he thought he was in Congress or something, “Court is in recess.”

Hank laid on the simulated humility. “I beg your pardon, your honor,” he said, trying to sound like he meant it more or less literally, “but the next case on the docket is my daughter Buffy, which as you can see, she’s incarcerated and apparently very sick. I’d like to be able to get her out of here in time to see if her doctor can fit her in this afternoon.”

“Mr. Summers,” said the judge impatiently, “ I understood that you had secured the services of an attorney to speak on your daughter’s behalf.”

“Yes, your honor, I have,” Hank assured him, indicating Ms. Morrisee, who produced a wilting, embarrassed shadow of a smile, “But your hon—”

“Then, Madam,” he scolded the girl harshly, just as if she had been the one addressing him, “I suggest you advise your client to have a seat and let you do your job rather than letting him bob up and down interrupting my courtroom!”

“Yes, your honor,” she numbed, cheeks burning. He banged his gavel and that was that. Still mortified, Morrisee, who had gotten there five minutes _after_ court started, finally walked over and shyly begged the guards to given them a minute with Buffy.

They backed off a little for privacy, though not enough to suit Hank by any means. “Don’t they have any conference rooms in this place?” he demanded. The clerk just glared at him and hurriedly gathered her things to leave.

Buffy tried to smile. “What’s the sitch?” she asked Morrisee bluff casually.

“Well, um, I…” the young woman stammered, shuffling through a sheath papers as though they were some kind of divinatory device, “I think the main issue today is your detention status? I mean, I know it is, but the thing is, but the thing is technically, we are here on the charges from Saturday? Which aren’t set for an actual arraignment date until a month from today? And then there’s a trial date in April? But I guess they will go ahead and do that today since we’re here? I don’t know, but—The arrangement, not the trial—but anyways… um, it’s the charge from Tuesday, the, you know, the adult felony thing? That’s making us have to have this hearing? You know, even though they already set bail at $5,000 on that? But we have to see what they set bail on this because of it?”

“Are you sure about that?” Buffy asked dryly.

The little lawyer girl colored deeply again. “Well, I um…”

“Look,” Hank demanded impatiently. “We know why we’re here. Can you give us some idea what’s likely to happen?”

“I’m sorry?” the girl bleated. From the context, Hank guessed she was apologizing rather than asking for clarification. It hardly mattered.

“Hold that thought,” he said, graciously pretending to believe she was on the verge of having one. “Is Hal Gaston in the courtroom by any chance?” he called, “Hal Gaston?” Morrisee quailed. She obviously recognized the name of the ‘know-it-all local hotshot’ Leon had complained at length about having to get butted out of Buffy’s business.

“He was,” Buffy said. “He just left for lunch with the prosecutor.”

That pretty much did it for Hank. “Go back to L.A.” he instructed the trembling, baby-deer-eyed attorney harshly. “Tell Leon I’m not paying him four hundred dollars an hour to get his dick sucked and if that’s not part of your job, then whatever he’s paying you, it’s too much.”

****

“Oh God No!” Xander screamed. He was sitting up in bed he suddenly realized. His heart was hammering. Within seconds the pain in his back and arms reminded him of where he was. It was dim but not dark. He was drugged but not disoriented.

“It’s okay,” Cordelia reassured him, reaching for his hand. “You’re safe. It was just another dream.” He calmed a little and lay back down. Being able to do even that much for him totally justified cutting all her afternoon classes. He was healing. The graphs had taken well. But he was still unable to say much about what had happened to Buffy’s mom beyond the fact that he’d last seen her, alive but not well, in the company of a healthy, active vampire.

“I’m sorry,” he said, not for the first time. As always, he said it with a depth of regret that broke Cordelia’s heart. She didn’t think for a minute that he meant for screaming out of a nightmare. This time he did talk at least, a little more than before. “I did it,” he said bitterly. “I just rammed it in there.” He laughed miserably, shaking his head. “I stuck my fucking nail in her fucking tire. I might as well have shot her in the head. She’d probably be better off.” The look in Xander’s eyes was the same one he had worn when he’d watched his best guy friend Jesse crumble to dust around the stake in his hand. Shock. Horror. Comprehension clawing at disbelief for a handhold, falling screaming into confusion, certainty and angry guilt.

“It’s not your fault,” Cordelia repeated, as always. “You were doing what Buffy told you to do. Sometimes people just die.”

“But I wasn’t,” Xander said. “I wasn’t doing what Buffy told me to. I was supposed to stay with her. I left her there. And then, oh God, when I came back, the way she was acting… I should have known. I did know, I mean, I knew they had hit her on the head. The way she was acting! Some part of her brain must have been smashed! It was a symptom. She was dying. She needed my help.”

****

Hank found Hal in the café across the street, which was the way of small town courthouse folk everywhere. He paid the price to bring him back and bought lunch for him and the prosecutor both, which is a good way to find out how strict a state official isn’t about following rules. “What Hal and I were discussing,” Mark Engels explained, before this Mr. Pangrac got involved, was potentially Nolle Prossing the juvenile charges and see what happens on the adult felony case, but I’m not comfortable, I don’t think, dropping the prescription fraud or the weapons charge. So, what I was proposing was that if he won’t oppose my motion to transfer those to adult court, I’ll dismiss the other eight charges with prejudice.”

Other. Eight. Charges. “Holy shit!” Hanks said. Leon had made it sound like there were two or three misdemeanors and one felony fraud or forgery or something.

“It’s really a very good deal on the ‘flashing’ incident particularly,” Engels went on earnestly. “I charged it as a misdemeanor in juvenile court, but you know, it could be amended to felony sexual indecency, which is a registration offense by the way. I mean, the matinee was just letting out. I bet there were fifty little kids there.

“Wait, what?” Hank was beyond perplexed. “Registration?” The only thing that word made him think of that he could even vaguely connect to Buffy was gun control, but the no guns thing pretty much applied to all felonies, didn’t it?

“Don’t worry about that yet,” Hal advised him, standing up from the table. To Engels he said, “let me talk to my clients and let you know something before we start back up.” Hank paid the tab and hurried to follow Hal back across the street. “He’ll never make the sexual indecency charge stick,” Hal assured him conversationally. “There’s too much that would have to be proved about knowledge and intent. He just wants the threat of registration so that we feel like we’re winning something even though he’s adding a felony charge in adult court. Which, we are, but not because of that.”

Hank grabbed a hold of Hal’s shoulder to stop him from walking up the courthouse steps. “Look at me and talk to me,” he said with forced businesslike calm. “What indecency? What registration? What is everybody talking about? I thought this was about drugs.”

“Oh, wow,” said Hal apologetically. “That’s right, you live in L.A. I kind of forgot it was possible for someone not to know about this. Saturday night, the night of the Rosenberg murder—”

Hank was floored again. “Wait, the who what?” he demanded, horrified.

Hal quickly explained about the violent death of Buffy’s friend’s father and her probable boyfriend’s possible involvement with gentle but firm implications that all would be revealed if he would just stop interrupting. “So, anyway,” he concluded, “whatever was going on in the ceiling was apparently moving to the basement, so the young lady decides to follow and so she rips a hole in the ceiling and jumps down and she’s wearing a skirt with no underpants and excuse my French but she showed her snatch to about five hundred people, which is damn near 5% of the population of this pissant town, hence the exposure charge. But now you can see why I say he’ll never make the felony sex charge stick, I mean nobody’s trying to arouse or gratify anything, she’s just trying to get down to the basement and she just don’t give a crap.” Hank looked incredulous even more than horrified. Hal shrugged. “She blew a .27,” he explained. “That buys a whole boatload of don’t give a crap. A jury’s not going to make a registration offense out of that. I don’t even think Judge Fondren would, unless he had some kind of political motivation.”

“Wait just a damn minute!” Hank sputtered, finally catching up. “You’re talking about _sex offender registration_!?! For a sixteen-year-old girl!?! Who for all we know might have just been _raped_ by this Goddamned Mexican drug dealer?!!!?”

“Which is why I say it’ll never stick,” Hal pointed out calmly, “though I suppose there is some value in eliminating even a slight risk of something that bad, but I think there are a couple of much better reason to let Mark transfer the fraud and the weapons charge. First, we beat eight charges right out of the gate, including the alcohol charges which always come with a lot of hassle one way and another, but more importantly, we can wrap it all up concurrent in one First Offender Act plea, hopefully to probation, and get it _all_ expunged in a couple of years, which won’t happen if she has a previous unsealed felony adjudication in juvenile court. Truthfully, I think I could beat the fraud charge if she would let me lay it off on the Rosenberg girl, but since nobody’s buying what she’d selling on the battery charge, I don’t see arguing with her about it. But more important than any of that, for today anyway, is that it’ll all be one case in one court with one bond and none of the BS that goes with the juvenile court about curfews and school attendance and parental duties to report and all that shit. Although it is a condition of her bond in the AF case that she can’t leave Del Bacco County and she has to live with a parent or guardian, which is a problem with you living in L.A. obviously.”

“Holy God you’re kidding!” Hank declared. “We can’t live here, I’ll be commuting five hours a day!” He actually seemed quite a bit more upset by this news than by the fact that his seventeen-year-old daughter had shown her goodies to half the town and was widely believed to be fucking a mass murderer. “When am I gonna network?” he railed. “When am I going to entertain? What’s going to happen to all my client relationships? There’s got to be a way around this!”

“Not unless someone else wants to be her guardian,” Hal informed him flatly, impatiently. Incredibly, he seemed to be considering it.

“No,” he murmured thoughtfully after a moment, “I don’t think even Darlene—Oh Jesus Christ, Darlene! Has anyone told Joyce’s family that she’s missing?” Hal pointed out that since he was about the only ‘anyone’ Buffy had without Joyce, and it wasn’t the kind of circumstances that would lead the police to go check and see if maybe she had just gone to her mother’s for a day or two, he really doubted it. “Oh Jesus!” Hank said again. He was beginning to get a sense of just how not under control everything was, or rather, Hal corrected himself, he _thought_ he was. What he _was_ getting a sense of was bad enough.

As if to prove how little he truly understood Hank said, “What about someone who already lives here in town? Maybe that librarian guy Joyce is always gushing about? Giles something? I mean, he’s obviously concerned about her, Buffy said that’s where she got your number. D’you think there’s any chance he would do it?”

Hal successfully suppressed a shudder of horror and a spasm of guilt. Trusting a Watcher to look after your teenage daughter was almost as safe as trusting a Marine Corps recruiter with your teenage son, but there was no way to explain any of that and no way it could do any good even if believed. Buffy’s fate was already sealed. It wasn’t like there was any unsigning her up. And Hal could think of many more productive things to do than arguing with a man that wasn’t any more conscientious than to try to palm off his already troubled sexually active teenage daughter on a middle aged man he’d barely met _knowing_ he’d shown an inordinate interest in her. He supposed it was just lucky than Mr. Giles’ interest in Buffy wasn’t actually what any moron should have suspected. Still, he couldn’t quite bring himself to endorse the suggestion. “He’s in the hospital right now,” he pointed out instead. “Come on,” he added, “It’s 2:15.”


	4. Life and Death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Oz follow his nose into big trouble at the hospital, Buffy must confront an invisible monster and a horrifying memory, but in the process she may be revealing herself to Hank in ways that could be truly dangerous. Meanwhile Ryan and his friends discover... something else. There are a lot of something else's in this town.

After school, Oz stopped by the hospital again, this time to check on Xander. Giles didn’t usually need any help during the 11a to 11p shift. That one older nurse, Roberta, was always hovering over him like his long lost aunt or his personal attendant or something. There wasn’t that much he could do for Xander for that matter, but he knew Willow would want him to be checked on and that she would never think that Cordelia doing it really counted. And he had expressed once, in a joking only not kind of way, that he appreciated having visitors because it drove his mother from his room for a few minutes each day. Then he’d said, totally seriously, that he just wished she would take a walk or get some rest, which he didn’t think she did, even at night. Instead, whenever she left his room she would join the legion of other terrified parents praying their guts out in the chapel although she, unlike all the rest of them, had been repeatedly and honestly assured that her son was in no real danger of death.

It hardly seemed to matter. The spirit of mourning and dread that permeated the hospital seemed to be almost as infectious as the disease that was fueling it. Walking into Sunnydale General was like walking into a funeral being held on a battlefield while combat was still going on. There were dead and dying children everywhere. The townsfolk were one tiny corpse away from starting their own Passion Play or canonizing rats. The gristly murder of the head of Pediatrics hadn’t helped matters any. Those who had placed all their faith and trust in Dr. Backer were ready to abandon all hope.

In the hallway leading to Xander’s room Oz passed an orderly zipping a pale toddler into an opaque nylon bag while his mother wept and screamed in his father’s arms. The hairs on the back of Oz’s neck stood up. There was a scent in the air. A scent like death but not like the flu. Oz took a big whiff and followed his nose. It lead him down another hallway, past the wards where the dying children slept and from there into darker, tighter spaces.

In a close, hot utility room behind the furnace, the smell became overwhelming. Oz heard the faint sound of slow, deep, even breathing behind him. He whipped around in time to see the lock turned by an invisible hand. The wielder of the hand growled. Oz jumps backward, hearing the metallic zing, feeling the air stir as unseen claws passed before his face. He grabbed a sturdy looking shelf, which (thank the first available god) was not bolted to the wall and pushed the invisible monster back with it. For a moment he seemed able to hold his own. Then he was slammed back against the wall. The shelf ground into him, slowly crushing his arms, resisting his attempts to push back. By the time his screams brought security rushing to the door, his arms were broken. The monster let go of the shelf, but it wasn’t gone. “Shoot it,” Oz screamed when the first guard stuck his head in the door.

The guard took a step back from the doorway, ignoring his words.“Another hallucinater’s gone and banged himself up in here!” he shouted to the orderlies.

“Drugs?” an orderly guessed.

There was a sense of a shrug in the guard’s voice. “Either that or this Goddamned flu,” he said. Laughing quietly, the monster walked away.

****

It was seven o’clock when Buffy was finally released into Hank’s custody. After lunch the judge had spitefully reversed the alphabet and then he had still had to wait for her to be taken back to the jail and processed out. There was no possibility of taking Buffy to her regular doctor, but she seemed to be doing better anyway. She hadn’t vomited since her very late lunch and other than seeming a little run down, she wasn’t showing any other symptoms of illness. “It was probably just something you ate in there,” he suggested. “Let’s just go home—to your house—and see how you feel in the morning.”

“I don’t know,” Buffy argued earnestly, “I mean people are like literally dying of this flu bug, shouldn’t I go the ER, at least have them check me out, I mean if I _have_ to end up spending a night in the hospital, I don’t _want_ to, you know that, but, I mean, isn’t it better to be cautious, I mean, better safe than sorry right?” She smiled a little too hopefully, silently imploring him to be convinced.

Hank pulled into a random parking lot, put the car in park, folded his arms across his chest and stared at Buffy. “Alright,” he said calmly, “what the hell are you up to?”

“What do you mean?” she asked, faking innocence very badly.

“You just asked me to take you to a _hospital_ in the middle of a _flu_ epidemic,” Hank pointed out. “I asked what the hell are you up to and I meant what the _Hell_ are you up to?” Buffy looked away and said nothing. “There’s someone there,” he persisted a little more calmly, “isn’t there? Some guy you want to see? Who is it that you’re so damned worked up about that you can’t wait fifteen hours to see him? Is it that Harris kid?” He guessed, “because from what Hal tells me, he’ll still be there in the morning. What could you possible want to do that I can’t see when you’re as sick as—”

Hank stopped abruptly. He looked at his daughter in a way that compelled her to look back at him. Which she did, seeming to follow what he was thinking, looking miserable and sorry and pleading and defiant all at the same time. He’d lived in the same house with this child for fifteen years and never once seen her so much as cough. Now she was as sick as Joyce Nuland the weekend _after_ the weekend in Cabo and there was someone in that hospital that she could not wait a single day to tell about it, hopefully in the middle of the night, when no one else would hear. “Your pregnant,” Hank said matter-of-factly. It wasn’t quite an accusation, but it wasn’t exactly a question either. It was a verdict, his assessment of the evidence.

Buffy sort of shrug-cringed, and made a pained face, the sum total of her body language speaking of apology and uncertainty rather than of indifference or of fear per se. “I think so,” she admitted, “but I don’t have a good reason for thinking it, at least I don’t think I do. It’s, or it should be, too soon to tell.”

“Who?” Hank asked with such a tone a patient, assured authority that Buffy had to look away and even then had trouble finding her voice to lie to him. ‘I don’t know,’ she almost said, but that wouldn’t fly. It would leave him to follow his own assumption, which was that it was someone she knew was in the hospital, which meant either Xander or the truth. She couldn’t let him think either of those things.

“Angel,” she said. It was the only thing horrible enough to be believed, something no one would say if it weren’t true. “Last week,” she added, looking away, “right before all the murders.” She could feel her father getting angry, holding in his temper as he put the car in drive and headed for her house.

“Were you planning on trying to see him tonight?”Hank asked in a hard quiet tone that wanted just a little more justification to become a shout. “Was he supposed to meet you at the hospital somehow?”

“God, no!” Buffy protested loudly, indignantly, making it easy on him, “Dad, how can you ask me that!?!”

“Because you just admitted to fucking the son-of-a-bitch!” Hank shouted back. “That bastard's probably killed you mother, he probably raped her too, do you realize that! Where is he? Where are you supposed to meet him!?!”

“I’m not!” Buffy shouted, not faking her anger or confusion, or her guilt for that matter. “I swear to God I’m not! I just—I wanted talk to Giles!” The name hung dangerously in the air for a moment before Buffy added quietly, “I wanted to talk to him because Angel killed his girlfriend and now I’m probably pregnant and I’m confused and sorry and scared and I don’t know what to do, and I’m _sorry_ , but he’s the one I wanted to tell all this and not you because he’s the one who’s here all the time and you’re not.”

“And that’s my fault?” Hank demanded, feeling regret turn his stomach before the words were even quite out of his mouth. Because it might not have been his choice for Buffy to have moved to this Godforsaken town in the first place, but he had pretty much proved how willing he was to have this other guy do the job of being her father, even if she didn’t know it.

“I never said it was your fault!” Buffy screamed back, tears shining in her eyes. “None of this is your fault! Nothing is ever your fault! That’s all that matters right! Not what happens to me or Mom or how we feel, just as long as it’s not YOUR FAULT!!!” Angry silence filled the car. It was suffocating. They were only a few blocks from the house, but they weren’t getting there soon enough. “Look, why don’t you just drop me off at home and go back to L.A.?,” Buffy suggested, drying her eyes, trying to sound casual, reasonable, not angry. “I’ll swear on a stack that you're living here. If anyone comes to check, I’ll say you just left.”

“No,” Hank said, his voice unreadable, his eyes on the road. Finally, they pulled into the driveway. The garage opener was lost with the rest of Joyce’s stuff and Hank didn’t feel like doing it the hard way. They got out of the car and went into the house. “Set the table,” he said, and went upstairs to call Janet, to ask her to get his mail and water his plants and make enough room on his calendar that he would only have to drive into L.A. about three times a week until Buffy’s formal arraignment on March 18th when they would hopefully, finally be able to explain to the judge how vital it was to change the conditions of her bond. And if the judge still didn’t see reason? Hank would just have to deal. He was a man. He was Buffy’s father. If she needed him in Sunnydale, then she needed him in Sunnydale. It was a question of responsibility.

****

Mitzie Lovelle lay on her stomach elbows propped on her bed in her tiny apartment, wet polished toes waving at the ends of her bent-kneed legs, listening to the noise of the city and writing in her diary about everything that had happened to her in the last three days.

"… _I guess, I forgive him,"_ she wrote _, "but I was super pissed at first, because it is actually pretty scary to be right in the middle of doing it with someone and then find out that he won’t listen to you and won’t stop, but I guess he really thought I was just complaining about his technique or whatever, which is stupid to me, but I guess some girls are like that. … Anyway, I’d better forgive him I guess, because he has only been gone since yesterday and I already miss him so much I can’t stand it! God I can’t wait to see him on Monday! I can’t believe I forgot to get his home number again, but I guess it’s probably just as good I can’t call him this weekend because he’s probably busy with his daughter and everything and I bet she’s pretty freaked out about her mom. Probably not the time when a teenaged girl want to pick up the phone and meet her dad’s brand new teenage girlfriend!_

_"…I tell you what though, if I do end up getting pregnant, I’m going to be super pissed all over again, because I did tell him to stop, or I would have, if he would have just listened to me! Plus my mom and dad would just about die! L.A. people don’t necessarily get married when they have babies at least not right away and they so would not understand that! But, anyway, it’s almost another two whole weeks until I’m supposed to get my period, so it’s way too early to start worrying about it now."_

****

There were eight messages from Cordelia, at first casual, then cryptic, then increasingly frantic, then frustrated, almost angry, concluding with the demand that Buffy _must_ call her immediately, about ‘a matter of life and death.’ Buffy erased as she listened, thanking God when she finished before her father got back from calling his slut secretary. But before she could dial Cordelia’s cell number, she heard him coming down the stairs.

“I thought I told you to set the table,” he said, tired, mildly frustrated, more than mildly frustrating. It was well after seven-thirty now, long after sunset and hours after that last, frantic message. Buffy needed to be elsewhere. If only she could think of a way to distract her dad!

Overwhelmed by a tidal wave of guilt and grief, Buffy collapsed into a chair, laid her face on the table and wept. She didn’t even realize she was banging the table with her fists until she heard it crack. Hank, already rushing to her side to comfort her got there in time to pull his startled daughter out of the way of the collapse. He was pretty stunned himself. “Did _I_ do that?” she tried to joke, but she was too miserable to find anything very funny.

So was Hank. “There must have been a crack in it already,” he assured her soberly.

Suddenly, Buffy straightened her shoulders and looked at him with such deadly seriousness that he almost blinked or looked away. For a moment he thought she was going to scream at him again, but then she said, quite calmly, quite deliberately, “No there wasn’t. Dad, there is something you need to know about me, and I need to tell you right now, because it’s a matter of life and death.”

“Okay,” he said, fully expecting some horrific revelation about this Angel person, with whom he assumed she was still somehow in contact or at least knew how she could be.

“When I told you this before,” she warned him, “you didn’t believe me. This time, you have to let me show you.”

“Show me what?” Hank asked worriedly. “When didn’t I believe you about something?”

“Two years ago,” she said, “In L.A.” Buffy had been fiddling with a handful of something she’d picked up off the sideboard, she handed the remains to Hank, who’s brain took it’s sweet time making sense of them. Tiny broken pieces of metal that more or less added up to two spoons, two knives and two forks. “Dad,” Buffy told him grimly, “I’m a Vampire Slayer.”

****

“This way!” Ryan hissed. The others follow him without question, like soldiers, down the stairs, quick and quiet, just the way he had told them it would have to be. Some of them were no more than four, but they did what they needed to do. No officer had ever been prouder of his men, or more grateful. To have made too much noise would have meant death, really and truly, for good and all.

When they got down there, he motioned once again for everyone to stay close and quiet. He didn’t tell them what he was doing. There wasn’t time and he didn’t have to. They trusted him. He was the boss. What he was actually doing was looking for a secret door. One he had heard two tall, ugly night-shift orderlies whispering about. The door that went down into the tunnels.

****

“It’s about time you called!” Cordelia hissed. “Do you know what a pain in the ass it is to get into this library without Giles? I seriously had to break a window! I swear to God, if I get arrested for breaking into a _library_ I’m just going to give up and become a nerd already, there’ll be like literally nothing else I can do! And all because of fighting stupid evil!”

“Before you become a martyr to the cause,” Buffy said sardonically but also a tiny bit sympathetically, “do you mind telling me what the big ‘life or death’ emergency is?”

“Der Kendis Tod!” Cordelia hissed.

“Gesundheit,” Buffy said.

“Ha, ha,” Cordelia said. “Xander’s awake now, you don’t have to fill in for him.”

“Fine, whatever,” Buffy said, “Just tell me what it is and what I need to do to it, I sent my dad to get the car already because he’s freaking out and it’s freaking me out a little bit.”

“You’re bringing your _dad_ with you?” Cordelia repeated incredulously.

“No,” Buffy said sarcastically, “I’m going to get some of my friends to think of a way to distract him while I go out slaying!”

She was being harsh, and Cordelia almost told her so, but she bit her tongue. This was no time. Quickly, she filled Buffy in on the invisible demon who was bellied up to the all you can eat sick children bar at Sunnydale General. “… It doesn’t cause the flu exactly,” she explained, “more like, it’s drawn to it? But then once it shows up, it strengthens the virus, makes it resistant to treatment. Now go on,” she added impatiently, “Get to the hospital. I already talked about all of this to Giles’ new girlfriend, she can fill you in.”

Buffy was stunned as if by a slap to the face. It took her a full second to realize that the reference had been sarcastic and even then she couldn’t help asking for clarification. “You’ll see,” Cordelia said, cryptic and infuriatingly amused, but there was no more time to talk about it. Buffy ran out to the car and got in.

“Things are going to get really weird really fast,” she warned her father on the way, “I need you to trust me and do exactly what I say, can you handle that?”

“I think so,” Hank said. Buffy had a strange feeling that he was a little too calm. Once they got to the hospital, it didn’t take long to find out why. Instead of pulling around back as instructed, Hank pulled up to the ER’s ambulance door where an intern, a nurse, a security guard and a gang of orderlies were waiting for them.

“Oh, no!” Buffy protested. The last time something like this had happened, she’d been restrained for two weeks. “I do _not_ have time for this! I thought you understood! I have to kill the demon!” Buffy’s mouth clamped shut. “You know, what,” she said, opening her door very slowly and carefully, “you’re right. That does sound crazy. I need help. I see that now.” She would just have to be cooperative long enough to get inside the hospital without being drugged or tied up or having to hurt anyone, then she would make a break for it and find Giles.

The security guard, a bald, self-important prick who had tried to hit on Buffy on one of her recent visits to the ER, pressed forward meaning to lay hands on her, but the nurse, a stout woman of sixty, held up a hand to stop him. “Why don’t you come with me dear,” she intoned sweetly, her bland Midwestern accent sugar coated like she thought Buffy was retarded or something. But less than a minute later, as soon as they had put a few steps between the two of them and the men, she hissed in Buffy’s ear, in an urgent, practical tone and an unmistakably British accent, “I’m taking you to Mr. Giles. As soon as we’re in the lift we can speak freely.”

“Oh thank God you’re here!” Giles half shouted, when he saw Buffy. She wanted to run to him, to put her arms around him, more than that. With Roberta watching she didn’t dare. The look in his eyes said he felt the same. Instead, with little more than a nod of greeting, she encouraged his Nurse-Watcher ‘girlfriend’ to continue her briefing. The bottom line was the thing was invisible, and with the young flu victims having (prudently) fled en masse…

“It sounds like the hard part is going to be finding it,” Buffy mused.

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry too much about that,” Giles said, sounding very, very worried indeed. Buffy and Roberta followed his gaze in time to see the door of the room apparently opening itself. Suddenly, with a scream of pain and terror, Roberta was thrown against the wall, her face and throat sliced open. Something laughed a mean gravelly laugh like an amused growl, giving away its position. Instinctively, Buffy leapt up and kicked the door closed, wanting to keep the invisible thing confined. But flu or no flu, she was dizzy again. Lunch had made both that and the nausea better, but she had neglected to eat dinner.

Buffy lost her balance and fell flat on her ass. Before she could get her bearings, the thing was on top of her. It’s horrible weight oppressed her and she felt its hot breath. Thinking of Marcy Ross, Buffy closed her eyes. From what Roberta and Cordelia had said, its eyes, despite their special structure and function should be about the same place as anybody’s. Buffy calculated there position from the position of his hot, dripping mouth and tried to stick her thumbs in them. Just as she registered both the fact that she had missed and that the mouth had moved she heard Giles’ anguished cry. She opened her eyes in time to see him flying through the air, his IV rack held in both hands like a quarter-staff, blood spraying from him. He landed hard against the wall and fell to the floor. The bed blocked him from her view.

While the monster was still laughing at its own ‘joke’, Buffy seized the moment. She grabbed its suckery eyes right where the new position of its chortling, furnace mouth said they should be and pulled. It gave a satisfying wail of inhuman suffering, so Buffy pulled harder. She tried, without letting go, to dodge the razor sharp claws that zinged past her face, but one badly scored her neck and shoulder, sending blood spurting for an artery. Ignoring the pain and the blood, Buffy went for it’s now empty eye sockets again. Penetrating the two tiny orifices with both thumbs. With a groan of finality, it collapsed atop her, dead weight at last.

Still spraying blood everywhere, Buffy heaved the beast off her while she still had the strength. Grabbing a pillow from the bed, hugging it against her wound for the pressure, she made her way over to Giles. He too was bleeding badly, though with none of the arterial spurting she was trying to contend with. He breathing was deep and ragged, but when she collapsed against him, she found that he was conscience. He wrapped his least damaged arm around her and murmured fiercely against her hair, “Oh, Buffy, I love you! God help me I do!”

At that moment, a commotion of noise near the doorway told Buffy that they were no longer alone in the room. At that moment, she couldn’t have cared less. “I love you too,” she murmured, the last word spoken before the world went silent.

****

“Can you feel that?” Drusilla asked, drawing her brutal nails the length of Spike’s naked thigh, making four razor thin welts.

“Yeah, baby,” he breathed, working the first three fingers of his left hand deeper inside her cunt. “You feel that too don’t you.” His cock was now standing erect for the first time in more than a week. Grinning, Drusilla took him whole into her mouth, fucking him with her throat, deep and fast. That was where Vampires had it all over human girls when it came to oral sex. Dru could swallow enough of his cock to have easily choked a human to death, not that that couldn’t be fun or at least amusing, but it was usually a kind of a disappointing finish, even more so than a dead cunt.

Spike was in a state of bliss, and not just because he was getting monster head. His spine was definitely healing, though he was still unable to stand or to move his legs very much. Sensation was back. In time, the rest would come.

Suddenly aware of being watched, Spike opened his eyes to see a dozen more staring back at him. Six little jaws hung slack in amazement. Drusilla sat up grinning and licking her lips as his hard cock dropped like a plump sausage from her mouth.

“Don’t worry,” my dears,” she said. “I know much better games than that, even for _little_ boys and girls. Have you ever played a game called ‘Chain’?” A couple of little heads shook. The rest were frozen in fear. “It’s like tag,” Drusilla explained serenely, “except, by the time the game is over, everybody’s It.”

 

 


End file.
